No Justice, No Resilience: Prison Abolition As Disaster Mitigation in an Era of Climate Change

Abstract

Disasters are becoming more frequent and destructive while the consequences for incarcerated persons have grown increasingly visible. Simultaneously, scholars, individuals, and communities are grappling with police brutality and systemic anti-Black racism in the criminal legal system by engaging with the concept of abolition. In this article we demonstrate that these issues are not disconnected and argue that the abolition of the prison industrial complex (PIC) would mitigate the impacts of disasters for incarcerated persons and their communities. Incarceration undermines individual and collective resilience needed to recover from disasters, whereas carceral infrastructure facilitates disaster harm to incarcerated persons and their communities. Incarceration itself mirrors the harm and destruction of a disaster. Abolition of the PIC would not only prevent harm from incarceration, but also systems of accountability put in place by communities as suggested by abolitionists would contribute to the resilience of individuals and communities. By examining these connections, we provide a framework for considerations of abolition in an era of reckoning with anti-Blackness, the violence of the criminal legal system, and climate change, and suggest further investment of research in these areas.

Full text

No Justice, No Resilience:
Prison Abolition As Disaster Mitigation
in an Era of Climate Change
Carlee Purdum,
i
Felicia Henry, Sloan Rucker, Darien Alexander Williams,
ii
Richard Thomas, Benika Dixon, and Fayola Jacobs
ABSTRACT
Disasters are becoming more frequent and destructive while the consequences for incarcerated persons
have grown increasingly visible. Simultaneously, scholars, individuals, and communities are grappling
with police brutality and systemic anti-Black racism in the criminal legal system by engaging with the
concept of abolition. In this article we demonstrate that these issues are not disconnected and argue that
the abolition of the prison industrial complex (PIC) would mitigate the impacts of disasters for incar-
cerated persons and their communities. Incarceration undermines individual and collective resilience
needed to recover from disasters, whereas carceral infrastructure facilitates disaster harm to incarcerated
persons and their communities. Incarceration itself mirrors the harm and destruction of a disaster. Abo-
lition of the PIC would not only prevent harm from incarceration, but also systems of accountability put in
place by communities as suggested by abolitionists would contribute to the resilience of individuals and
communities. By examining these connections, we provide a framework for considerations of abolition in
an era of reckoning with anti-Blackness, the violence of the criminal legal system, and climate change, and
suggest further investment of research in these areas.
Keywords: disaster, abolition, prison labor, emergency management, vulnerability, racism
INTRODUCTION
With recent highly visible instances of state-
sanctioned violence in the form of police brutality,
increasing attention on anti-Black racism within the
criminal legal system in the United States, and worldwide
support of the Black Lives Matter movement, scholars
and community members are increasingly engaging with
the concept of abolition with regard to the continuum of
state violence. At the same time, hazards and disaster
scholars, practitioners, and community members are
looking to the current and future impacts of climate
change while working to bring attention to disasters as
not ‘‘natural’’ but in fact reflections of vulnerability and
oppression. The two issues have been studied by their
respective fields but are rarely examined in connection
with one another.
In this article, we examine systemic anti-Black racism
and violence in the context of both the prison industrial
Dr. Carlee Purdum is a Research Assistant Professor at the
Hazard Reduction and Recovery Center in the Department of
Landscape Architecture and Urban Planning at Texas A&M
University, College Station, Texas, USA. Ms. Felicia A. Henry
is a Doctoral Student in the Department of Sociology and
Criminal Justice at University of Delaware, Newark, Delaware,
USA. Prof. Sloan Rucker is an Organizer with Fight Toxic
Prisons and a Graduate Student in the Department of Sociology
at the University of Houston, Houston, Texas, USA. Mr. Darien
Alexander Williams is a Doctoral Student in the Department of
Urban Studies and Planning at Massachusetts Institute of
Technology, Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA. Mr. Richard
Thomas is an Organizer with Fight Toxic Prisons at Fight Toxic
Prisons Southwest, Fight Toxic Prisons, Fort Worth, Texas,
USA. Dr. Benika Dixon is a Visiting Assistant Professor in the
Department of Epidemiology and Biostatistics at Texas A&M
University, College Station, Texas, USA. Dr. Fayola Jacobs is
an Assistant Professor in the Humphrey School of Public Affairs,
University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, Minnesota, USA.
i
ORCID ID (https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9801-9513).
ii
ORCID ID (https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1679-3669).
ENVIRONMENTAL JUSTICE
Volume 00, Number 00, 2021
ªMary Ann Liebert, Inc.
DOI: 10.1089/env.2021.0020
1
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complex (PIC) and disasters to argue that abolition of
the PIC is necessary to mitigate the harms of the carc-
eral state and environmental injustice for Black com-
munities. Anti-Blackness shapes mass incarceration and
resilience to disasters, creating and exacerbating disas-
ters for individuals who are incarcerated and their
communities. Furthermore, we argue that alternative
practices of community-led accountability, like that of
transformative justice, are viable mechanisms to
achieve a world without prisons, and thus contribute to
the individual and collective resilience of all individuals
and communities.
LEGACIES OF ANTI-BLACKNESS
IN THE UNITED STATES
The PIC
According to the abolitionist organization Critical Re-
sistance, the ‘‘prison industrial complex’’ refers to ‘‘the
overlapping interests of government and industry that use
surveillance, policing, and imprisonment as solutions to
economic, social, and political problems.’’
1
Anti-Black
racism, or anti-Blackness, asserts that Black people are
subhuman. Many scholars who study anti-Blackness locate
the origins of anti-Blackness in chattel slavery and argue
that the logic of enslaving Black people continues to shape
the current economic, political, environmental, and spatial
realities of Black individuals and communities.
2
Although
the PIC has its roots in anti-Blackness, one aspect, namely
incarceration, is central to the maintenance of this system.
The history of the carceral state is based largely on
political concerns about controlling Black life in the
United States and is predicated upon systems of anti-
Black dehumanization. Black communities were among
the first targeted for the testing of new methods of sur-
veillance and policing.
3
Black family life has been pa-
thologized and targeted for state intervention and
incarceration, with particular impacts on Black women.
4
The United States is the world’s leader in rates of
incarceration with 698 per 100,000 residents locked up and
1 in 40 adults under some form of correctional supervision.
5
The phenomenon by which the number of incarcerated
persons in the United States has grown by >500% over the
past 40 years has been referred to as ‘‘mass incarceration.’’
6
However, as abolitionist scholars such as Daniel Rodriguez
have observed, the term mass incarceration is a misnomer.
7
Incarcerated persons are excised from different communi-
ties at drastically different rates. Incarcerated persons are
disproportionately representative of the most marginalized
communities, particularly racial and ethnic minorities,
8
with Black individuals most excessively represented under
carceral control.
In many ways, the state’s operation of enslaving Black
people simply continued through the targeted arrest and
imprisonment of Black people. The codification of the
13th amendment exemplifies this; it states, ‘‘Neither slav-
ery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for
crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted,
shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to
their jurisdiction.’’
9
Thus, the origins of prisons and prison
labor are rooted in anti-Blackness. In legal, geographic, and
political terms, this entails the confinement of Black people,
the exploitation of their labor, and the ongoing precari-
ousness of Black life long after the effects of incarceration
ripple across all communities.
Environmental injustice
Environmental justice and disaster scholars have found
that the same trends of anti-Blackness in the carceral
state apply to environmental harms. Globally, as Pellow
and others have articulated in cases ranging from Black
people, indigenous societies, and Palestinian communi-
ties, systems of racial, ethnic, religious, and class domi-
nation through infrastructures of surveillance and
containment tend to cluster criminalized subjects in
environmentally precarious settings.
10
The same popu-
lations targeted by the PIC, predominately Black com-
munities, are subjected to disproportionately high rates of
environmental harm, particularly disasters.
11
1
Critical Resistance. ‘‘Our Communities, Our Solutions: An
Organizer’s Toolkit for Developing Campaigns to Abolish Po-
licing.’’ October 2020. <http://criticalresistance.org/cr_abolish-
policing-toolkit_2020>. (Last accessed on May 11, 2021).
2
Peter James Hudson and Katherine McKittrick. ‘‘The Geo-
graphies of Blackness and Anti-Blackness: An Interview with
Katherine McKittrick.’’ The CLR James Journal 20 (2014):
233–240.
3
Garrett Felber. Those Who Know Don’t Say: The Nation of
Islam, the Black Freedom Movement, and the Carceral State.
(UNC Press Books, 2019).
4
Bruce Western and Christopher Wildeman. ‘‘The Black Fa-
mily and Mass Incarceration.’’ The ANNALS of the American
Academy of Political and Social Science 621 (2009): 221–242.
5
Laura M. Maruschak and Todd D. Minton. ‘‘Correctional
Populations in the United States, 2017–2018.’’ US Department of
Justice, Office of Justice Programs, Bureau of Justice Statistics,
2020; Peter Wagner and Wendy Sawyer. ‘‘Mass Incarceration:
The Whole Pie 2020.’’ Prison Policy Initiative, 2020. <https://
www.prisonpolicy.org/reports/pie2020.html>. (Last accessed on
May 8, 2021).
6
Nazgol Ghandnoosh. ‘‘U.S. Prison Decline: Insufficient to
Undo Mass Incarceration.’’ The Sentencing Project,2020.<https://
www.sentencingproject.org/publications/u-s-prison-decline-insu
fficient-undo-mass-incarceration>. (Last accessed on April 28,
2021).
7
Dylan Rodriguez. ‘‘‘Mass Incarceration’ as Misnomer.’’ The
Abolitionist, 2016. <https://abolitionistpaper.files.wordpress.com/
2017/04/the-abolitionist-issue-26.pdf>. (Last accessed on May
8, 2021).
8
Ryan Lugalia-Hollon and Daniel Cooper. The War on
Neighborhoods: Policing, Prison, and Punishment in a Divided
City. (Beacon Press, 2018).
9
(U.S. Const. amend. XIII).
10
David Naguib Pellow. What Is Critical Environmental
Justice? ( John Wiley & Sons, 2017); Elijah Baker, Cambria
Wilson, Fabiana Lake, and David Pellow. Environmental Justice
Struggles in Prisons and Jails around the World: The 2020
Annual Report of the Prison Environmental Justice Project.
(2020).
11
Jayajit Chakraborty, Timothy W. Collins, and Sara E. Gri-
neski. ‘‘Exploring the Environmental Justice Implications of
Hurricane Harvey Flooding in Greater Houston, Texas.’’
American Journal of Public Health 109 (2019): 244–250.
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Anti-Blackness determines the conditions of our com-
munities, from who lives in floodplains to who lives in
prison. Anti-Black practices such as Jim Crow laws, red-
lining, and racial covenants restricted where Black indi-
viduals could buy property and where Black communities
could exist. The legacy of these practices remain.
12
Black
communities are more exposed to hazardous air pollution
and environmental conditions.
13
Black people are more
likely to be living in floodplains.
14
Black communities
disproportionately bear the brunt of losses from flooding
hazards.
15
In essence, communities feel disaster impacts in
racialized terms. Anti-Blackness shapes communities’
exposure to environmental hazards and disasters.
The production of hazardous carceral geographies
The term ‘‘mass incarceration’’ has been co-opted by
criminal justice reformists who argue that the issue with
incarceration is that it has grown too large, too expensive,
and entangled too large of a portion of Americans.
However, it is not just that the United States incarcerates
an enormous amount of people, although that is certainly
part of the issue, but that incarceration itself creates harm
for individuals and communities.
16
Prisons are enormous
institutions that house several hundred to several thou-
sand persons. The need for large tracts of cheap land led
to prisons being built in rural areas and often with little
concern for the presence of environmental and techno-
logical hazards.
A history of building correctional facilities on or near
Superfund or toxic waste sites has led to exposure to
environmental hazards such toxic coal waste, radioactive
waste, pesticides, and insecticides.
17
Incarcerated persons
in toxic correctional facilities have reported or experi-
enced adverse symptoms such as skin irritation, gastro-
intestinal, neurological, and respiratory problems that are
consistent with exposure to environmental hazards.
18
Chronic health conditions including asthma and other
respiratory illnesses may be exacerbated by issues such
as poor environmental ventilation, unsanitary conditions,
and the geographic location of correctional facilities.
19
The production of these hazardous carceral geographies
thus create harm for the individuals who are incarcerated
within carceral institutions, and perpetuate legacies of
environmental injustice fueled by anti-Blackness.
INCARCERATION AND UNNATURAL DISASTERS
Disasters are in fact not ‘‘natural’’ but are products of
policy decisions and the vulnerability of marginalized
and oppressed people and places.
20
This can be acutely
observed in the context of disasters and incarceration as
the deleterious effects of disasters are both made possible
and amplified by carceral institutions. Prisons operate as
their own ‘‘little towns’’ that keep them largely invisible
to the public, but also isolated from resources in times of
disaster.
Housing such large numbers of people makes taking
protective actions extremely difficult if not impossible.
Notions of punishment dictate the withholding of re-
sources allocated and given to incarcerated individuals;
scholars show that time and time again, incarcerated
individuals are left to fend for themselves in disasters
while prison staff and administrators often either do the
bare minimum or nothing at all.
21
One of the most controversial issues concerning prisons
and disasters is the consistent refusal of state governments to
evacuate incarcerated people even as surrounding commu-
nity members are told to evacuate due to the presence of a
hazard. There are countless examples of this across con-
temporary prison history. During Hurricane Harvey in Au-
gust of 2016, people incarcerated at the Stiles Unit in
12
Douglas S. Massey, and Jonathan Tannen. ‘‘Suburbaniza-
tion and Segregation in the United States: 1970–2010.’’ Ethnic
and Racial Studies 41 (2018): 1594–1611.
13
Michael Ash and James K. Boyce. ‘‘Racial Disparities in
Pollution Exposure and Employment at US Industrial Facil-
ities.’’ Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA
115 (2018): 10636–10641.
14
Chakraborty et al. (2019). Op. cit.
15
Kevin T. Smiley. ‘‘Social Inequalities in Flooding Inside
and Outside of Floodplains During Hurricane Harvey.’’ En-
vironmental Research Letters 15 (2020): 0940b3.
16
Rodriguez. (2016). Op. cit.
17
Elizabeth A. Bradshaw. ‘‘Tombstone Towns and Toxic
Prisons: Prison Ecology and the Necessity of an Anti-Prison
Environmental Movement.’’ Critical Criminology 26 (2018):
407–422; Maggie Leon-Corwin, Jericho R. McElroy, Michelle
L. Estes, Jon Lewis, Michael A. Long. ‘‘Polluting Our Prisons?
An Examination of Oklahoma Prison Locations and Toxic Re-
leases, 2011–2017.’’ Punishment & Society 22 (2020): 413–438;
Kelsey D. Russell. ‘‘Cruel and Unusual Construction: The Eight
Amendment as a Limit on Building Prisons on Toxic Waste
Sites Comments.’’ University of Pennsylvania Law Review 165
(2017): [i]-784.
18
Bradshaw. (2018). Op. cit.; Leon-Corwin et al. (2020).
Op. cit.; Russell. (2017). Op. cit.; Baker et al. (2020). Op. cit.
19
Meghan A. Novisky, Chelsey S. Narvey, and Daniel C.
Semenza. ‘‘Institutional Responses to the COVID-19 Pandemic
in American Prisons.’’ Victims and Offenders 15 (2020): 1244–
1261; Meghan A. Novisky and Robert L. Peralta. ‘‘Gladiator
School: Returning Citizens’ Experiences with Secondary Vio-
lence Exposure in Prison.’’ Victims and Offenders 15 (2020):
594–618; Paul L. Simpson and Tony G. Butler. ‘‘Covid-19,
Prison Crowding, and Release Policies.’’ BMJ 369 (2020):
m1551; Baker et al. (2020). Op. cit.
20
Ksenia Chmutina and Jason von Meding. ‘‘A Dilemma of
Language: ‘Natural Disasters’ in Academic Literature.’’ Inter-
national Journal of Disaster Risk Science 10 (2019): 283–292.
21
Yolanda Martinez and Anna Flagg. Puerto Rico Puts Its
Prisons Near Flood Zones. (The Marshall Project, 2017). <https://
www.themarshallproject.org/2017/09/21/puerto-rico-puts-its-
prisons-in-flood-zones>. (Last accessed on May 8, 2021); Wil-
liam Omorogieva. ‘‘Prison Preparedness and Legal Obligations
to Protect Prisoners During Natural Disasters.’’ (2018); Melissa
A. Savilonis. Prisons and Disasters. (Northeastern University,
2013); Gabe Stern. Report Details Inconsistent Procedures in NY
Prison during COVID-19 Outbreak. (The Daily Orange, 2020).
<http://dailyorange.com/2020/09/report-details-inconsistent-
procedures-ny-prison-covid-19-outbreak>. (Last accessed on May
8, 2021); Sarah S. Vance. ‘‘Justice after Disaster—What Hurricane
Katrina Did to the Justice System in New Orleans Keynote Ad-
dress.’’ Howard Law Journal 51 (2008): 621–650.
NO JUSTICE, NO RESILIENCE 3
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Beaumont, Texas, experienced gravely dehumanizing con-
ditions. Although many state prisons were evacuated, 3000
people inside the Stiles Unit were caught in the storm.
22
Men reported inadequate meals and water supply, and
all water sources were shut off. The toilets could not flush
and many overflowed, and the two porta–potties per cell
block of 450 people were seldom granted access to the
individuals incarcerated by the guards. One man reported
flooding in his cell up to his knees. Similarly, in 2008,
Hurricane Ike caused major food and water shortages and
poor sanitation conditions in the Galveston County Jail.
In Orleans Parish Prison after Hurricane Katrina, people
were left without water, food, and ventilation for days, and
in many cases, guards abandoned their post altogether.
23
In
some cell blocks, contaminated water rose to chest level.
24
Repeatedly, incarcerated people are left to suffer. Not al-
lowing for evacuation and not having proper supplies for
incarcerated people are putting them in harm’s way and
compounding the effects of disaster. Time and time again,
incarcerated people are treated as unworthy of protection.
Prisons are prime examples of vulnerable spaces
housing vulnerable individuals. These health conditions
are often exacerbated by factors including recidivism,
duration of incarceration, inadequate access to health
care, and exposure to environmental hazards and disas-
ters.
25
The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pan-
demic has magnified the racial disparities and health care
vulnerabilities that exist in the criminal legal system as
seen with other hazards and disasters.
As of the beginning of 2021, there have been 354,725
COVID-19 cases and 2224 deaths among incarcerated
persons.
26
Jail community cycling, or incarcerating then
releasing people from a given zip code from Cook County
Jail, was associated with 15.7% of all COVID-19 cases in
Illinois in April 2020.
27
In this way, incarceration has
helped fuel the pandemic’s spread, as repeated prison
transfers, poor ventilation, overcrowding, and close habi-
tation make Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
COVID-19 recommendations impractical to follow.
28
The status of incarcerated persons as slaves under the
13th amendment to the United States constitutions and the
risks produced by environmental harms, including disasters,
has been described as ‘‘environmental slavery’’ to allow a
deeper understanding of the intersections of environmental
racism and enslavement.
29
The vulnerability of incarcerated
people has been documented in disaster response and
recovery operations, for example, to fight wildfires or clear
debris after a disaster.
30
Although this form of prison labor is
seen as redemptive, it is extremely exploitative.
One prominent example lies in the incarcerated fire-
fighters in California whose lives are endangered to curb
and suppress wildfires and save others from the impacts
of this disaster. Roughly 30% of California’s forest fire
fighters are incarcerated people.
31
They receive a brief
4-week training and are paid as little as two dollars an
hour on the fire line.
32
The state of California saves
roughly $80 million a year using incarcerated firefight-
ers.
33
Studies of state-level emergency plans have found
that the majority of U.S. states plan to use incarcerated
workers for disaster labor effort.
34
Research has found
that programs using incarcerated firefighters do not
consistently track or measure the success of such pro-
grams in terms of rehabilitation or reducing the return of
incarcerated persons to prison.
35
The use of disaster labor of incarcerated persons can also
be seen in the COVID-19 pandemic where in many cases
incarcerated persons are only able to access personal pro-
tective equipment manufactured in prison factories and
only after the majority of the masks produced in the prisons
have been distributed to free persons.
36
Although incar-
cerated people are not deemed worthy of protection them-
selves, they are still expected to protect others.
Organizers and activists from various groups have
recognized the horrid treatment at every level of incar-
cerated people specifically during disaster response. The
Campaign to Fight Toxic Prisons (FTP), an abolitionist
organization focused on the intersection of incarceration,
the environment, and liberation movements, has addressed
this on several levels. One mission of FTP is to reduce the
harm produced by such disasters. FTP attacks issues from
22
Nathalie Baptiste. ‘‘‘We Didn’t Have to Suffer like That’: In-
side a Texas Prison during Hurricane Harvey.’’ Mother Jones
(blog), 2017. <https://www.motherjones.com/crime-justice/2017/
11/we-didnt-have-to-suffer-like-that-inside-a-texas-prison-during-
hurricane-harvey>. (Last accessed on May 2, 2021).
23
ACLU. ‘‘Abandoned and Abused—Orleans Parish Prisoners
in the Wake of Hurricane Katrina, ACLU, 2006 jPrison Legal
News.’’ 2006. <https://www.prisonlegalnews.org/news/publicat
ions/aclu-abandoned-and-abused-katrina-prisoners-2006>. (Last
accessed on May 11, 2021).
24
Ibid.
25
Novisky et al. (2020). Op. cit.; Simpson and Butler. (2020).
Op. cit.
26
COVID Prison Project. ‘‘Home.’’ COVID Prison Project, 2020.
<https://covidprisonproject.com>. (Last accessed on May 10, 2021).
27
Eric Reinhart and Daniel L. Chen. ‘‘Incarceration and Its
Disseminations: COVID-19 Pandemic Lessons from Chicago’s
Cook County Jail.’’ Health Affairs 39 (2020): 1412–1418.
28
Leola A. Abraham, Timothy C. Brown, and Shaun A.
Thomas. ‘‘How COVID-19’s Disruption of the U.S. Correc-
tional System Provides an Opportunity for Decarceration.’’
American Journal of Criminal Justice (2020): 1–13.
29
Sacoby Wilson. ‘‘Environmental Justice and Health Dis-
parities: Passion, Partnerships, and Progress.’’ Presentation at
University of California, Santa Barbara, May; David N. Pellow.
‘‘Political Prisoners and Environmental Justice.’’ (2018): 1–20.
30
J. Carlee Purdum and Michelle A. Meyer. ‘‘Prisoner Labor
Throughout the Life Cycle of Disasters.’’ Risk, Hazards & Crisis in
Public Policy 11 (2020): 296–319.
31
Julia Lurie. ‘‘30 Percent of California’s Forest Firefighters
Are Prisoners.’’ Mother Jones (blog), 2015. <https://www.mother
jones.com/environment/2015/08/40-percent-californias-fires-are-
fought-prison-inmates>. (Last accessed on April 29, 2021).
32
Ibid.
33
Ibid.
34
Purdum and Meyer. (2020). Op. cit.
35
J. Carlee Purdum. ‘‘States are Putting Prisoners to Work
Manufacturing Coronavirus Supplies.’’ The Conversation, 2020.
<https://theconversation.com/states-are-putting-prisoners-to
-workmanufacturing-coronavirus-supplies-135290>. (Last accessed
on April 20, 2020).
36
David Brand. ‘‘New York State Will Give All Inmates Face
Masks as COVID-19 Death Toll Rises.’’ Queens Daily Eagle,
2020. <https://queenseagle.com/all/new-york-state-will-give-all-
inmates-face-masks-as-covid-19-death-toll-rises>. (Last accessed
on May 9, 2021); Rachel Ellis. ‘‘Prison Labor in a Pandemic.’’
Contexts 19 (2020): 90–91.
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multiple fronts, from urging for evacuations, demanding
relief aid, and supplying monetary help to incarcerated
people impacted by natural disasters such as hurricanes.
Incarceration and disaster resilience in Black
communities
The disproportionate impact of disasters and incarcera-
tion on Black communities reflects but also reinforces the
disruption of resilience, a concept understood by disaster
scholars to reflect the capacity of people and communities
to ‘‘survive, adapt to, and recover from loss and disrup-
tion.’’
37
Resilience as a concept is difficult to define but is a
particularly valuable concept because it ‘‘brings together
normally separate perspectives, people, professions and
practices and creates a space for dialogue.’’
38
Bringing together the literature of both disasters and
incarceration demonstrates how incarceration erodes the
resilience of individuals and entire communities. Resi-
lience to disasters for individuals requires a variety of
resources that having been incarcerated makes extremely
challenging to obtain, especially for Black people, such
as job security, wealth, stable access to safe housing, and
social capital to name a few.
Previous research has established that Black people are
disproportionately harmed by disasters. Research has shown
Black people are more likely to be laid off, experience longer
bouts of unemployment, and are less likely to see employ-
ment recovery after a disaster.
39
Black people, particularly
women, are more likely to experience long-term housing
instability after a hazard event.
40
In some cases, disaster
survivors are stigmatized in their new homes.
41
Incarceration
contributes to these issues in several ways. Incarceration
negatively impacts the long-term employment prospects, in-
come, and wealth.
42
Criminal records more widely impact
Black people more than non-Black people, especially in terms
of accessing employment.
43
Encounters with the criminal
justice system produce lasting Black housing insecurity.
44
Incarceration also disrupts social capital both at the
individual and community levels. Social capital repre-
sents a type of social infrastructure wherein resources are
dispersed through a network of social relationships. In-
carceration removes individuals from their networks of
social relationships that has rippling effects on individ-
uals and their communities. As individuals are removed,
communal relationships are disrupted, leading to broad
destabilization throughout entire communities.
45
The
disruption of social capital also erodes the resilience of
communities to disasters.
46
Social capital networks
facilitate access to resources in disasters such as infor-
mation, aid, financial resources, childcare, and psycho-
logical support.
47
Without fully understanding and addressing the root
causes of disaster inequities, including incarceration, miti-
gation measures will fail to adequately protect the lives and
livelihoods of Black communities, especially as climate
change increases the frequency and intensity of extreme
weather events. Anti-Blackness in disasters cannot be ero-
ded without the dissolution of the anti-Black carceral state.
Abolition, power, and hazard mitigation
Social isolation, grounded in notions of punishment, is
in direct opposition to what is necessary for efficient
recovery in a hazard situation. Unlike those in the ‘‘free
world,’’ incarcerated people cannot draw on their social
capital or social networks during a disaster. Several at-
tempts have been made to describe these conditions of
punishment and domination. The framework of necro-
politics describes how political and social power can be
wielded to ultimately decide who lives or dies, usually in
the form of state action.
48
During disaster, as explained by Clyde Woods’ docu-
mentation of the history that produced the destruction of
Hurricane Katrina, the state engages in ‘‘planned aban-
donment’’ and determines a threshold of risk or death
before government intervention.
49
In the context of rising
fascism, racism, and nationalism, unequal treatment
grows, where some privileged citizens receive protection,
37
Lori Peek. ‘‘Children and Disasters: Understanding Vulner-
ability, Developing Capacities, and Promoting Resilience—An
Introduction.’’ Children, Youth and Environments 18 (2008): 20.
38
Hugh Deeming, Maureen Fordham, Christian Kuhlicke, Lydia
Pedoth, Stefan Schneiderbauer, Cheney Shreve (Eds.). Framing
Community Disaster Resilience. (John Wiley & Sons, 2019).
39
Lisa K. Zottarelli. ‘‘Post-Hurricane Katrina Employment
Recovery: The Interaction of Race and Place.’’ Social Science
Quarterly 89 (2008): 592–607.
40
James R. Elliott and Junia Howell. ‘‘Beyond Disasters: A
Longitudinal Analysis of Natural Hazards’ Unequal Impacts on
Residential Instability.’’ Social Forces 95 (2017): 1181–1207.
41
Jennifer Tobin-Gurley, Lori Peek, and Jennifer Loomis.
‘‘Displaced Single Mothers in the Aftermath of Hurricane Katrina:
Resource Needs and Resource Acquisition.’’ International Journal
of Mass Emergencies and Disasters 28 (2019): 170–206.
42
Alan J. Auerbach, David Card, and John M. Quigley. Public
Policy and the Income Distribution. (Russell Sage Foundation,
2006).
43
Devah Pager, Bruce Western, and Naomi Sugie. ‘‘Sequencing
Disadvantage: Barriers to Employment Facing Young Black and
White Men with Criminal Records.’’ The ANNALS of the American
Academy of Political and Social Science 623 (2009): 195–213.
44
Amanda Geller and Marah A. Curtis. ‘‘A Sort of Home-
coming: Incarceration and the Housing Security of Urban Men.’’
Social Science Research 40 (2011): 1196–1213.
45
Todd R. Clear. Imprisoning Communities: How Mass In-
carceration Makes Disadvantaged Neighborhoods Worse. (Ox-
ford University Press, 2009).
46
Daniel P. Aldrich and Michelle A. Meyer. ‘‘Social Capital
and Community Resilience.’’ American Behavioral Scientist 59
(2015): 254–269.
47
James R Elliott, Timothy J Haney, and Petrice Sams-
Abiodun. ‘‘Limits to Social Capital: Comparing Network
Assistance in Two New Orleans Neighbors Devastated by
Hurricane Katrina.’’ Sociological Quarterly 51 (2010): 624–
648; Jeanne Hurlbert, Valerie Haines, and John Beggs. ‘‘Core
Networks and Tie Activation: What Kinds of Routine Networks
Allocated Resources in Nonroutine Situations?’’ American So-
ciological Review 65 (2000): 598–618; K. Kaniasty and F.H.
Norris. ‘‘A Test of the Social Support Deterioration Model in the
Context of Natural Disaster.’’ Journal of Personality and Social
Psychology 64 (1993): 395–408.
48
Achille Mbembe. Necropolitics. (Duke University Press,
2019).
49
Clyde Woods. Development Drowned and Reborn: The
Blues and Bourbon Restorations in Post-Katrina New Orleans.
(University of Georgia Press, 2017).
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opportunity, and resources that contribute to vitality. This
concept is demonstrated in the clear divide between how
incarcerated and free world citizens are treated. Espe-
cially in times of disaster, incarcerated people are treated
as subhuman and are placed in death’s way.
In these contexts, marginalized and racialized people
receive punishment and violence from a state that wields
necropolitical power during disaster. Many incarcerated
individuals come from communities directly impacted by
systems of oppression, which erode their social capital
and social networks before their incarceration, and ulti-
mately serve as gateways to incarceration.
50
This pro-
duces a compounded social vulnerability for incarcerated
people. Theories of punishment cannot coexist with
concepts of recovery and resilience. Thus, abolition
provides insight into how to tangibly reduce harm.
APPLYING AN ABOLITIONIST FRAMEWORK
Defining abolition
Abolition is defined as ‘‘a political vision with the goal
of eliminating imprisonment, policing, and surveillance
and creating lasting alternatives to punishment and
imprisonment.’’ Abolition not only represents the dis-
mantling of infrastructures of punishment, incarceration,
and surveillance but also the building of infrastructures
of care, support, and harm reduction. As a strategy,
abolition involves the creation of economic social cul-
tural support that renders crime increasingly unnecessary
and reduces instances of harm.
51
Angela Davis perhaps
put it most concisely when discussing what is required
for such a project:
‘‘In order to imagine a world without prisons, or at
least a social landscape no longer dominated by the
prison, a new popular vocabulary will have to replace the
current language, which articulates crime and punish-
ment in such a way that we cannot think about a society
without crime except as a society in which all the
criminals are imprisoned. Thus, one of the first chal-
lenges is to be able to talk about the many ways in which
punishment is linked to poverty, racism, sexism, homo-
phobia, and other modes of dominance.’’
52
This project is furthered by Ruth Wilson Gilmore,
whose critical text Golden Gulag evaluates prison im-
pacts alongside the intention of crime reduction. She also
specifies the impact of carceral geographies on the poli-
cies and practices instituted by the prison system. On
another end of the study, Mariame Kaba articulates finer
points of abolitionist community building after prisons
are eliminated. Rather than solely focusing on the harms
committed by the prison system, Kaba shifts the focus to
a community-centered approach to harm. ‘‘We should
redirect the billions that now go to police departments
toward providing health care, housing, education and
good jobs. If we did this, there would be less need for the
police in the first place.’’
53
Others, including Najma Sharif, Stephen Wilson,
rapper and community-organizer Noname, and Devyn Eli
Springer, advocate for abolition of police and prison ra-
ther than reform to the current systems for similar rea-
sons, which, as Davis has articulated, fails to address the
root of social problems, but rather addresses how popu-
lations feels about troublesome and morally indefensible
outcomes of the PIC.
54
Proponents of critical environmental justice studies have
posited that the inherent need to construct, maintain, and
deepen ‘‘brutal hierarchies’’ within the U.S. prison system
reflects its unsalvageable nature as a system of power.
55
Environmental justice scholars have also proposed that
abolitionist theory must be relied upon to truly address
racism and anti-Blackness in environmental harms.
56
An
abolitionist lens highlights the way the prison system is
inherently harmful in its treatment of incarcerated people as
subhuman, a process that is further amplified in the context
of disasters.
Prisons determine who receives protection and who is
ultimately harmed in disasters. This harm ripples out into
the communities from which incarcerated people have
been removed, particularly harming Black people and
communities. Although not being protected themselves,
incarcerated people are exploited to provide labor during
disasters. The study of David Pellow has highlighted how
the organizing of incarcerated persons, who are slaves of
the state, against the conditions of their confinement, and
the exploitation of their labor, slaves rebellions.
57
A world without prisons
Abolitionists recognize prisons as mechanisms of
structural anti-Black harm, unlike a structural function-
alist might view prisons as regulators of social order and
norms. Abolitionist theory is broad, yet the overall goal is
a societal shift from punitive measures to rehabilitative
measures. Proponents of abolition also often support
decarceration efforts, divestment from prisons, abolition
50
Jennifer Bronson and E. Ann Carson. ‘‘Prisoners in 2017.’’
US Department of Justice, Office of Justice Programs, Bureau of
Justice Statistics 500 (2019): 400; Marc Mauer. ‘‘Addressing
Racial Disparities in Incarceration.’’ The Prison Journal 91
(2011): 87S–101S; Bruce Western and Becky Pettit. ‘‘In-
carceration & Social Inequality.’’ Daedalus 139 (2010): 8–19.
51
Critical Resistance. (2020). Op. cit.
52
Angela Y. Davis and Dylan Rodriguez. ‘‘The Challenge of
Prison Abolition: A Conversation.’’ Social Justice 27 (2000): 217.
53
Mariame Kaba. ‘‘Opinion jYes, We Mean Literally Abolish
the Police.’’ The New York Times, June 12, 2020. [Section,
Opinion]. <https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/12/opinion/sunday/
floyd-abolish-defund-police.html>. (Last accessed on May 10,
2021).
54
Najma Sharif and Stephen Wilson. ‘‘Noname on Dreaming
of a World Without Prison Walls.’’ Dazed, September 15, 2020.
<https://www.dazeddigital.com/read-up-act-up-autumn-2020/
article/50397/1/read-up-act-up-autumn-2020-noname-guest-edit-
abolition>. (Last accessed on May 9, 2021).
55
Pellow. (2018). Op. cit.
56
L. Pulido and J. De Lara. ‘‘Reimagining ‘Justice’ in En-
vironmental Justice: Radical Ecologies, Decolonial Thought,
and the Black Radical Tradition.’’ Environment and Planning E:
Nature and Space 1 (2018): 76–98.
57
Pellow. (2018). Op. cit.
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of police and Immigrant and Customs and Enforcement,
and moratoriums on the construction of new penal
facilities. Although reformists think the system can be
fixed, abolitionists recognize that the injustice of the le-
gal system is inherent and intentionally produces harm.
58
In the context of hazard mitigation, abolition entails
ending the use of forced prison labor, funding supports that
eliminate recidivism, supporting individuals and commu-
nities in climate and environmental justice challenges, and
exploring nonviolent alternatives to policing and dispute
resolution. Abolition removes the onus of systemic vio-
lence from incarcerated persons, their families, and their
communities. It goes beyond merely reducing harm, and
offers an additive approach to safety, stability, and pro-
viding means for resilience for incarcerated people and
their communities.
Although a world without prisons seems difficult to
imagine, there are other options. Transformative justice
provides us with one viable alternative to prisons.
Transformative justice includes processes of community
accountability to address harm. Transformative justice
recognizes that many root causes of harm are systemic
and it allows for accountability and healing without using
damaging punitive measures that further the cycle of
harm.
In the short term, one goal of prison abolition is
immediate decarceration, or the reducing of the size and
scope of prisons. Today’s jails and prisons are largely
overcrowded, an issue that has recently gained more
visibility due to the viral COVID-19 pandemic and are
unable to adhere to proper precautions to contain a viral
pandemic such as social distancing.
59
Many health ex-
perts and abolitionists alike argue for the reduction of
prison populations during the COVID-19 pandemic to
decrease exposure to the virus.
60
The average age in prison has increased in recent
decades as a result of courts giving longer sentences.
61
Many elderly incarcerated people with pre-existing
medical conditions are at extreme risk for contracting and
suffering from COVID-19. Exposing seniors to COVID-
19 is a disaster and public health crisis. Prison popula-
tions can be reduced through shortening sentences,
expediting trials, and placing fewer people into jail.
Other strategies include the investment in the
community-based resources and community self-
governance that promote alternatives to incarcerations
including community-based public safety approaches
such as violence prevention and intervention programs,
skills-based education on bystander intervention, consent
and boundaries, and health relationships.
62
In this way,
abolition not only represents the mitigation of harm
itself but also an investment in community resilience.
Overall, decarceration not only benefits system-involved
people but the larger community as well and contributes
to individual and collective resilience as alternatives
promote the investment of resources directly into the
community and work to replace a system that produces
harm.
CONCLUSION
The impact of climate change in the United States and
around the world grows more visible and devastating with
each passing year. The burden of climate change impacts,
including increases in the frequency and intensity of
disasters, continues to fall on Black communities and other
marginalized and oppressed populations. The PIC con-
tinues to target and harm the same communities during
these increasing impacts, yet the relationship between the
PIC and disasters is often overlooked.
In the context of violence and harm from both disaster
impacts (which are in no way natural) and the PIC, the
abolition perspective challenges us to imagine and create
a world in which communities have what they need to
survive and thrive without depending on systems of
punishment that produce further harm. The abolitionist
vision calls for ending the PIC by, ‘‘challenging the be-
lief that caging and controlling people makes us safe’’
and instead to understand that ‘‘things like food, housing,
and freedom are what create healthy, stable neighbor-
hoods and communities.’’
63
The relationship between incarceration and disaster is
twofold: prisons create and exacerbate disaster. Prisons
create disasters by negatively impacting incarcerated peo-
ple and communities. Incarcerated people experience social
isolation, forced labor, and abuse inside facilities. Inside
prison, people are exposed to traumatic events from vio-
lence and death to the daily motions of strip searches and
physical confinement. Furthermore, clear health disparities
exist within prison. Incarcerated people are at greater risk
for many different diseases while they simultaneously have
less access to quality health care. The environment of
prison in itself is a disaster that causes harm.
Furthermore, the conditions of prison exacerbate the
impacts of disaster. Incarcerated people’s safety, well-
ness, and needs are often overlooked and neglected
during times of disaster; they are stripped of their
autonomy to protect themselves within the confines of a
cell. In some instances, incarcerated people are enlisted
to provide disaster response. Incarcerated people can be
legally enslaved by the state, under the 13th amend-
ment, without receiving adequate protection themselves.
58
Mariame Kaba. We Do This Til We Free Us: Abolitionist
Organizing and Transforming Justice. (Haymarket Books, 2021).
59
Laura Hawks, Steffie Woolhandler, and Danny McCormick.
‘‘COVID-19 in Prisons and Jails in the United States.’’ JAMA
Internal Medicine 180 (2020): 1041–1042.
60
Hawks et al. (2020). Op. cit.; Noel Vest, Oshea Johnson,
Kathryn Nowotny, Lauren Brinkley-Rubinstein. ‘‘Prison Popu-
lation Reductions and COVID-19: A Latent Profile Analysis
Synthesizing Recent Evidence from the Texas State Prison
System.’’ Journal of Urban Health 98 (2021): 53–58.
61
Hawks et al. (2020). Op. cit.
62
8toAbolition. ‘‘8 to Abolition: Abolitionist Policy Changes
to Demand from Your City Officials.’’ 2020. <https://static1
.squarespace.com/static/5edbf321b6026b073fef97d4/t/5ee0817c
955eaa484011b8fe/1591771519433/8toAbolition_V2.pdf>.(Last
accessed on April 29, 2021).
63
Critical Resistance. (2020). Op. cit.
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Anti-Blackness, rooted in slavery, fuels environmental rac-
ism and incarceration; anti-Blackness simultaneously moti-
vates poor environmental conditions and over policing in
Black neighborhoods. Moreover, the motivation and history
of prisons lie in the state’s attempt to control and suppress
Black Americans.
Given the harm, abuse, and disruption of resilience
perpetuated by incarceration, we recommend abolition as
a form of mitigation. We must work toward immediate
decarceration, divestment from prisons, and an end to
incarceration. Relying instead on transformative justice
and other alternative strategies allows for accountability.
This abolitionist shift from punitive measures to reha-
bilitative restorative measures would help prevent
disaster and harm from repeating itself over and over
again. The topic of prison abolition should be of interest
to anyone involved in disasters and hazard mitigation,
public health, and environmental justice.
AUTHOR DISCLOSURE STATEMENT
No competing financial interests exist.
FUNDING INFORMATION
This research received no specific grant from any funding
agency in the public, commercial, or not-for-profit sectors.
Address correspondence to:
Carlee Purdum
Hazard Reduction & Recovery Center
College of Architecture
Texas A&M University
College Station, TX 77843-3137
USA
E-mail: jcarleepurdum@arch.tamu.edu
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